


Every Open Sky

by Anonymous



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Gen, House Stark, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Finale, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 14:30:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18896509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Father would hate this, Bran thought distantly. The wolves were here still, but the pack hadn’t survived.And so the raven flies, and history is changed.





	Every Open Sky

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this right after watching the finale. Show fic with books details added in for extra flavour.

When Bran Stark had been six years old he’d had a pony called Thunder. Jon had taught him how to ride, and Robb had given him a red saddle embossed with the direwolf of their house. Even Sansa, who was skittish around horses, braided Thunder’s grey mane with scarlet ribbons, a symbol of her favour as befitted every knight entering the lists. Robb had howled with laughter, but the part of him that dreamed of one day being a knight of the Kingsguard had never felt prouder. Atop his small steed, Bran Stark had felt like the king of the world.

It was a good memory. He went back to Winterfell often in his mind, dreaming of days that would never return. Bran the Broken sat on a throne, and he’d never felt more alone.

Sansa wrote to him, sometimes. They were cheerful letters, full of optimism and enthusiasm, and they betrayed nothing of his sister’s true feelings. The worst of the winter had passed, and the next harvest promised to be a good one. Slowly, the North was healing. Bran felt numb, like his broken legs, like a dull lump of scar tissue. Sometimes he watched Sansa wake up screaming from her nightmares, watched Arya run from her past to the ends of the world, watched Jon grow cold and empty like he had in his very first vision, when the Raven had found him in Winterfell.

Father would hate this, Bran thought distantly. The wolves were here still, but the pack hadn’t survived. Bran had tried to become the Raven, to let go of his family and his past, but he didn’t want to be that person anymore. Lord of the Six Kingdoms, king of a charred block of iron, a broken boy in a barren kingdom.

There were few heart trees in the South. The godswood in King’s Landing, where Ned Stark had once confronted Cersei Lannister, had burned along with most of the city.

“That was how the Three-Eyed Raven discovered his powers,” he told Tyrion, trying to explain. “Praying to the Old Gods. Like we did in Winterfell.”

“I thought you were the Three-Eyed Raven. Your Grace.”

“The one before me. He died when…” Bran thought about Hodor, and Summer. He’d never been more scared in his life than he had that day, surrounded by the dying screams of the Children and the terrible cold. The fire in the King’s solar was roaring, but he shivered. “Before going beyond the Wall, his name was Brynden Rivers. He was Hand of the King under—”

“ _Bloodraven_ ,” said Tyrion, incredulous. “Really? I loved that story when I was a lad. They said he had eyes everywhere.”

“As the raven flies. Not much escapes a greenseer, if you know where to look.”

Tyrion should know. In the last year, they’d prevented five conspiracies, discovered countless plots, and found the truth behind innumerable disputes. King Brandon’s justice was famed all through Westeros, how he always found out the truth, his judgement always fair. They were doing some good in these lands, and Bran knew he should be proud like Tyrion was, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all _wrong_. It wasn’t how things had been supposed to go.

“I have… there’s something I want to try. But I’ll need a weirwood to do it.”

Tyrion Lannister was a born courtier. He lied as easily as breathing when it suited him, he was intimately familiar with the worst of humanity, and he was a ruthless realist. And he’d always been kind to Bran, in his witty way. He’d taken the reins of the kingdom and saved it from endless civil war, and he would never approve of Bran risking everything they’d build to chase a fantasy.

And so Bran lied.

“I need it,” he insisted. “I am afraid that with the Children dead, and the Night King, and Drogon away from Westeros… magic will grow week again in this part of the world.” That was a real concern of the Maesters of the Citadel, Samwell reported. “I want to learn out how to grow my power. I need to _see_. I need to—” _I need to fly_. Away from this world of ashes they’d made, to younger days and greener hopes.

And so Tyrion, who didn’t put much stock in gods and magic and anything that couldn’t be accomplished with two hands and human intellect, carried out his King’s orders in the name of a better future. He wrote to the lords of the Riverlands, to Bran’s uncle Edmure and the bannermen who’d once supported Robb’s claim, including Lord Blackwood of Raventree Hall, who alone among the families of the South kept the Old Gods. Every House requested the honour to host the King in their ancestral keeps, and the stout Lord Blackwood was no exception. Bran’s infirmity didn’t stop every House in the Six Kingdoms to wish their daughter a Queen, and so he was subjected to a grand banquet on the day of his arrival, and the attentions of two of Lord Tytos’s unmarried nieces. Tyrion snorted at the sight from behind his wine cup, and Bran missed Meera more than ever.

The moon was high when Ser Brienne finally escorted Bran to the godswood, helping him in front of the heart tree before going to wait some distance away. _If it all goes well you_ _’ll never see her again_ , Bran thought, and felt a twinge of guilt.

“Ser?” he called out, and Brienne turned.

“Your Grace?”

“I just wanted to say, thank you. For this, and… for everything.” The words were clogging up his throat. _You are the truest knight I_ _’ve ever met. When I was a child I wanted to be a knight like Arthur Dayne and Ser Barristan and the Dragonknight, and children born today will grow up wanting to be like Ser Brienne. You are loyal and just and good._

He couldn’t say any of it. Bran swallowed. “Thank you.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” Brienne said, smiling, and she retreated.

It was dark in the godswood but for the moon and distant torches. Bran could barely make up the face carved in the tree, wide-eyed and staring. Through those eyes, the Children and greenseers could see through time. The past was clearer, written and unfolded as it was. Futures were tricky: there were many of them, like branches sprouting from a tree.

“Hear me,” Bran whispered. “See me. Feel me.”

He patted his pocket for his knife, the blade made of bronze and carved with runes. Then he pushed back his cloak and his sleeve and cut a thin line across his forearm.

He bit his lip to muffle the noise and smeared his right hand over the burning cut. Then he pressed it against that ancient face, letting his blood seep into the white bark.

“Hear me,” he said, in his mind, in the thought-language he used for warging. “My name is Brandon Stark. Bran the Broken. The last of the greenseers, the last vestige of magic left in Westeros. The Children are gone and the Walkers are gone, and so are the last dragons. I’m alone.” Images flickered in his mind, of Winterfell and his family and home. He remembered a young Ned Stark kneel in front of the tree, and generations of his family before him, slitting their enemies’ throats and watering the roots with blood. He’d once seen the Three-Eyed Raven when he’d just been Bloodraven, Master of Whisperers, using the powers of the Old Gods to rule the kingdom of the Andals. And then he saw the army of the dead marching on Winterfell, the implacable advance of the Night King. The ice dragon, and Drogon flying away with Daenerys’s body in his clutches. Death and destruction, and kingdoms broken by war.

“And yet,” said a voice like the murmur of a mountain river, like the wind blowing through crumpling leaves. “Yet you survived.”

“We did. But we…” He struggled to explain. He thought about the sense of loss he felt, that of a world gone forever. He pictured a burning forest, frenzied animals feeling the flames. Trees uprooted by a winter storm, ice and snow tearing down everything in their path. The ashes in the streets of King’s Landing, the wailing of the death and the dying on a battlefield. Nothing would ever be whole again.

“The world is still here, young greenseer,” said the voice. “The mountains are still there, and your forests still stand. The rivers flow free of ice, and your fields are still fertile. Soon it will be Spring. You survived. The earth will heal.” The murmur took on a curious note. How could he explain to the gods of the forest what humans valued? Families had been destroyed, keeps burned to the ground. Their peace was frail, and if they failed it would be chaos.

“Human lives are short,” the voice conceded. “I can see your wish, young greenseer. You know the price will be great.”

“I don’t care,” said Bran. “Please. Hear me. Take my sacrifice.”

“You will be ripped off your time.” The voice had taken on the cadence of waves slamming on a rocky shore, of the harsh wind that blows in the winter. “Never to return, never to belong. You’ll sacrifice the frail peace of your world and undo it all on a chance of victory.”

“My sacrifice to make.” The cut on Bran’s arm was burning. It was shallow, but it had never stopped bleeding as he’d poured his thoughts and hopes into the heart tree. He let go of the carved face and gathered some of the blood again. “Take my lifeblood,” he said. “Take everything. It is my kingdom out there, and I am giving it to you.”

He pictured the tree that was Time, with its solid roots and its branches swaying in the wind. The chill of a spring freeze, and the sudden wilt. The branch that was here and now turned brown and lifeless, never to bear fruit.

“Your family,” the voice said, “your friends. The people they are now, their victories and their battles. You’ll render it all meaningless.”

“It’s my sacrifice to make,” Bran insisted. “My kingdom, my hope. Take it.”

The wind rose all around him, howling through the pale branches of the heart three, pricking Bran’s face with leaves and pieces of grass. It roared like a waterfall, as cold as the air up high where the raven flew. It screamed in his ears with the voice of thousands of dead, begging him to save them.

Bran Stark fell.


End file.
